The invention generally relates to an emergency contact system.
The occurrence of a catastrophic event, such as a natural disaster or an event that is attributable to terrorism, typically results in an increased use of local telephone exchanges near the location of the event. In this manner, many people typically rely on a land line-based or cellular telephone system for purposes of verifying the welfare of friends and family members that live or work near the location of the catastrophic event.
Unfortunately, the local telephone exchanges may become overloaded soon after the event occurs so that people cannot rely on the telephone system to check on friends and family members living in the area that is affected by the catastrophic event, as some telephone numbers may be inaccessible.
Thus, it may be desirable for friends and family members to keep alternative telephone numbers for each other for use in times of a catastrophic event. As example, these alternative telephone numbers may be land line-based telephone numbers, cellular telephone numbers, etc. However, keeping track of these alternative telephone numbers for use during a catastrophic event or other emergency is a laborious task, as the numbers frequently change due to changes in residence addresses, changes in cellular providers, etc. Furthermore, alternative contact numbers (a telephone number of a neighbor or the telephone number of a hospital, as examples) may emerge shortly after the emergency/catastrophic event. Therefore, someone may be reachable at a telephone number that was not originally listed with the set of emergency contact numbers for that person.
Thus, there is a continuing need for a technique and/or a system to accommodate one or more of the problems that are stated above as well as possibly address problems that are not stated above.